There are over 60 free logos available to any CPA website hosted by CPA Site Solutions. These have recently been changed. In technical terms, they have been vectorized. They can now be used for print without costly recreation costs. Here are newer additions to the logo gallery along with how the graphics have been updated.

Logo #1

No Loss of Quality. Images used on a CPA website are different from those used in print. When you try to use a logo from a website for print you get a lot of fuzziness. That fuzziness is very obvious to anyone, even those not used to looking for the finer details.

There are services available that can recreate a graphic from the web to be used with print. This can be a potentially costly solution that can be avoided.

No Longer Costly. When a logo is vectorized it can change to any size without that same fuzzy quality. That means you can use it for the web or print without having to recreate anything.

Business Cards, Flyers, and More. You can now brand your business for free. You can now use over 60 free logos for your CPA firm’s business cards, flyers, and more.

Logo #19

Find a Free Logo. Take a look at the over 60 free logos available to any website hosted by CPA Site solutions. Once you have found one, send the request via email at support@cpasitesolutions.com or call 800-896-4500 with the logo number.

CPA Site Solutions then incorporates your CPA firm name within the new logo. The new logo is sized appropriately for your particular CPA website design. The graphic is then placed on your CPA website.

Newer Logos. The amount of free logos available are increasing all of the time. Much like the amount of ready-to-go website designs.

Logo Site Viewer

Have your own experience with logos for your CPA website that you want to share? Send a comment below. Remember, when you comment you get a link back to your website which can help your search engine ranking.

A Secure File Exchange, or Vault, is included with any website hosted by CPA Site Solutions, but how can you get people to use it? Make it easy through client self-registration and use of the Vault application.

Client Self-registration. Clients can actually register themselves directly on your CPA website. Self-registration gets clients familiar with the system. It also offsets the time for one person from your firm to add user accounts, and then email them their login details. Clients can do this by:

• Clicking on the login text at the bottom of any page of your website
• Click on “Click Here To Register” at the bottom of the Portal Login prompt.
• Fill out the information and submit.

Client Registration

You can also create a link just for new registration to place anywhere on your website. You do this by following the directions above and then, instead of filling out the form, copy and paste the URL and then create a link.

Once a new user registers, you have to verify the user before they can login and start using the portal. See this link for more information on the user verification process.

The verification is only a few clicks so is easy and takes little time to do. The verification process creates an extra layer of security. Although anyone can technically register, only those that are your clients get verified by you.

The View. When a client logs in they are automatically within their own folder in the system. The client only has access to this main folder and a public folder, nothing else. They won’t see the firm, or other clients, folders or files.

Uploading and Downloading. Uploading and downloading a document is similar to any other paperless system. There is no real limit to the size of file, nor to the type, that can be used within the Vault.

Making It Even Easier. You can make going paperless even easier for you and your clients by using the Vault application available to anyone at the Gold service level and above. The application, once downloaded and installed, allows your client to right click on a file and send it directly to their folder.

This makes it much easier to make the transition to a paperless office and data stream. This type of set up saves you time and money over traditional methods.

Have your own client experience with using Secure File Exchange through the Vault? Send a comment using the form below, and share with other readers.

Scheduling a meeting with multiple people can be a time consuming process. When you are busy with tax season, you can have all this happen for you automatically. This is an easy process. Timebridge completes the management of responses and figuring out the best time for a meeting so you don’t have to for free!

Free Plan. All you have to do is register. Once you register it is easy enough to get started as there are prompts for everything you need to do.

Drag and Drop Times Requested

Send 5 Optional Times. You send the best five times available to meet to one or more attendees. These are automatically marked out in your calendar as a tentative meeting times.

They Pick Time, Meeting Created. They get an email with the proposed times and click on what works for them. Once all people have responded then the tentative meeting times get replaced by an actual meeting time.

Easily View Response Information

They Send 5 Optional Times. You can have your own calendar that you can send a link to any clients. They can then drag and drop the meeting times they want to propose. The clients don’t even have to register or login as a user to propose a time. Instead they confirm via a link sent to their email address.

You Pick Time, Meeting Created. An email is sent to you with the proposed times, you choose, and the meeting is created. This takes a lot of the back and forth that can happen via the phone or email.

Remote Meetings. If you opt for one of the paid plans then you can even host a remote meeting. You, and the meeting attendees, are given a link to the online location. You can share your screen, a whiteboard, and chat via voice or instant message.

When you need to create meetings with multiple people during a busy tax season it is nice having a lot of the work done for you. All that time you used to spend setting up the meeting can now be focused work you actually get paid to do.

Have your own ideas on how to schedule meetings when you are busy? Share with other readers by filling out the comment form below.

Give others reasons to talk about your CPA website and your firm becomes a natural part of conversation. Potential clients come from these impromptu conversations all of the time, it is a true case of social marketing. Here are three ways to keep talk about you and your firm alive.

Helpful Information. Most important, of course, is content full of helpful information that potential clients can use. Any accounting website hosted by CPA Site Solutions has plenty of content available. Including your own fresh and unique content, such as a blog, is an important part of this process.

Fun Widgets. You can add some fun elements such as the Free Debt Clock that you can see at the bottom of this blog post. You can also add a fun online poll or create a unique signature. Keep on the lookout for other fun ways to draw humor or light interest to your accounting website.

Client Spotlights

Showcasing Clients. Another way to have your website, and ultimately your firm, talked about is by showcasing your clients. A great example of this comes from the client spotlight page from Rhodes, Young, Black and Duncan.

Their firm has set up a regularly changing spotlight page and then an archive of previous client spotlights. Doing this is not only helpful for the client, but gets people within different social venues, talking about your firm.

When you can get your clients talking about you and your firm to their friends, then you are advertising. This form of advertising is in a way that is stronger and more effective than any traditional methods available.

Remember the next time you are reading a blog, including this one, you might take some time to offer helpful comments. Not only is it fun to do, but grants some search engine benefits as well.

Have a comment? Fill out the form below.

When you have an accounting website hosted by CPA Site Solutions, you have access to an easy to use Email Marketing System. As a previous post explains, there are ways to use the power behind the newsletters. Here are specific tips on using the Email Marketing System to help market your next CPA Seminar.

Create a Campaign. As detailed in the help section for the Email Marketing System, the first thing to do is create a campaign. Your new campaigns should be specific for each seminar you are running.

Email Marketing System

Attach Messages. You can then attach messages to the campaign. These messages can go to your regular subscribers letting them know about the new seminar and how to sign up.

Seminar Communication. As you start running the seminar, you can include messages specific to those who signed up. The first might welcome and thank them for signing up for the seminar.

You can then send reminder messages as you get closer to the seminar date. You might include details on what to expect and some of the logistics of how the seminar works if this is their first time attending. You can then send them a follow-up message when the seminar is over, thanking them for attending and elicit feedback via Survey Monkey.

Not everyone might be able to attend in your area. For those that can’t you can run seminars remotely if you need to using a free online presentation tool. You can help those attending follow along by using a free slide presenter to share the information.

You can use free online quizzes to help firm up what they should take away. You can either run the quiz during or after the seminar. Running the quiz during, if it is short, has the added benefit of stimulating conversation and making people feel more comfortable about asking questions.

Seminars are one of the key ways your firm can advertise your services and help bring in additional revenue for your firm.

Do you run seminars on a regular basis? Have some of your own ideas on how to run seminars smoothly? Send a comment and share with other readers your own experiences.

It isn’t enough just to have a CPA website and a blog, you need visitors and regular readers. You can get more readers by submitting your blog to blog directories and you can help your CPA website traffic by commenting upon other blogs.

Helpful Comments. When you write a blog, it is fun to get comments from readers. A good example is like the one recently from Reesa at Account Ability. Reesa had commented upon the CPA Site Solutions blog post about free online image editing.

Comments Are Always Welcome

A comment from readers can reinforce which blog posts are helpful. On the flip side, Reesa gets a link from the CPA Site Solutions site to her own which can help drive traffic to her website.

You can see an example of this if you go to the image editing blog post mentioned, scroll down to the comments, and then click on her name. When you do so you are brought to her website.

Be Specific. Your comment should add value and mention specific points in the article. If not, you risk your comment sounding generic, or something that could be added to any post. Then your comment could just get deleted as spam.

Take Notes for Specific Details

Adding Comments Box. When you add a blog for your CPA website hosted by CPA Site Solutions then you can also add a comments box. This is a great way to engage readers and, hopefully, get some helpful feedback.

Commenting on other blog posts is fun process as you engage with others online. There are search engine benefits from the activity. Just be careful of your reasons for posting.

If you are posting because you have something to say, then all is good. If you are posting just to try to get a link to your website, others can see this and you hinder, rather than help, your firm’s reputation.

If you have a CPA website hosted by CPA Site Solutions then you probably have multiple clients to manage. Keeping track of the amount of time spent with each one can be a task in and of itself. Here is a quick and easy solution that works automatically in the background so you don’t have to.

Chrometa. Although Chrometa does cost $99 it is worth the money considering the time saved doing things manually. There is a 30 day free trial that gets most hooked on how easy it is to use.

Automatic Time Tracking

All Automatic. After you download and install it, Chrometa works entirely in the background logging everything that you do and how much time you spend doing it. Although there are previous posts on a free time tracker, the problem still remains in terms of remembering to start and stop the feature.

Going Away. If you step away from your desk you can actually pause Chrometa while you are gone. If you forget then there is a box that automatically pops-up recording the amount of inactive time. You can type in exactly what you were doing, for example talking on the phone with a particular client.

Export Excel Document. You can even export a report to Excel that tells you the activity, what application you were using, and the time using it down to the second. This can give you great historical data that can be printed out if needed.

Training Videos. You can get off and running with Chrometa without doing anything but installing it on your computer. However if you really want to get the most out of what it holds then you might consider the free online training video.

When your CPA firm gets busy, keeping track of how much time you spend on each client can get tricky. Every minute you don’t have to spend logging your actions, you can spend on work that directly generates revenue for your company.

Have a comment? Fill out the form below.

When you have an accounting website hosted by CPA Site Solutions, you have access to 55 logos for your firm. These logos are modified with your firm’s name, re-sized, and placed on your website all for free. For those times when you don’t find exactly what you are looking for, and don’t want to do it yourself, you can try ready made logos from 99 Designs.

Finding A Logo. If you don’t have a logo for your CPA website already, finding one can be quite a process. You can shorten this by getting ready made logos that have a particular style without the cost.

Ready Made Logos for $99

Ready Made Logos. The ready made logos from 99 Designs are much like the logos available to any CPA website hosted by CPA Site Solutions. Ready made means that you find one you like, your business name is placed in, and you have a new logo.

Making It Your Own. The only part about having a ready made logo is that another company can have the same logo as you. The benefit though is that the cost of the logo from 99 Designs is only $99.

There is an option to get exclusive rights to a logo for only $100 more. This means that you won’t find another company with that same logo and so can call it your own.

Free Ready Made Logos

If you are just starting out your CPA firm, or have never had a logo and are unsure about what to do for one, you may find ready made logos work for you. If not, there are some options to get exclusive rights.

Need to change your logo? Send an email to support@cpasitesolutions.com or call 800-896-4500.

There is a lot of information on what you get with each service level when you look at pricing for a CPA website hosted by CPA Site Solutions. When you consider the amount of time saved through the two hours of updates at the Gold or Platinum level then it becomes a much easier choice. Here are some reasons for new or existing clients to consider the Gold level.

Two Hours of Updates. There are often questions regarding exactly what is meant by two hours of updates for your CPA website per month. There is a previous post on two hours of updates that helps clarify what that means.

Busy Tax Professionals. Certainly your time as a CPA or other tax professional is worth more than $10 an hour. Yet you only pay $20 more to go from the Silver to the Gold level. Plus you not only get two hours of updates but also access to many more ready-to-go website designs.

Have CPA Site Solutions Add Pages For You

Easy To Do. Although it is true that the Site Manager is easy to use, there are many other tasks that call for your attention. When you are not used to using a free online photo editor to resize photos for the web for instance, then that can be time consuming.

When you hand off that task to CPA Site Solutions you can get that done without so much worry and more time to focus on your own clients. Plus at the Gold level you also get access to a great application that allows for automatic backup of critical files.

This application is available not only to you but your clients as well. You can even sell the critical backup file solution to your clients for a minimal fee.

Flexibility. When you have a CPA website with CPA Site Solutions you are under no contracts and pay on a monthly basis. You can use this flexibility to your advantage.

Lets say you know that you are only going to be using the two hours of updates and not any of the other features. You also know you are going to be very busy for the next couple of months but still want to update your CPA web site.

You can move to the Gold level for a couple of months. You can then email CPA Site Solutions with photos and content with directions on where to place them. Usually twenty-four hours later the task is complete.

Think you want to switch to the Gold level? You can email support@cpasitesolutions.com or call 800-896-4500 with your request.

If you have a website hosted with CPA Site Solutions at the Gold or Platinum level then you have access to a great critical file backup feature. Although there is a great previous post and help section on how the file backup feature works to back up files, what about recovery? Here are some quick reasons to use the feature and how to easily recovery files.

Your Firm, Your Clients, Your Business. All of these elements rely upon consistent use of data over time. Your firm has a legal and business obligation to make sure that data is kept safe. Your clients, and therefore your firm and business, rely on you to make informed choices on how that data is maintained on a daily basis.

Automatically Off-Site. One of the best choices you can make is to have your data in another location than your main business. This is traditionally called Off-Site Backup and has been done in the past with tapes. The beauty of current technology is that you can do the same Off-Site Backup with less hassle and much faster recovery time.

Critical File Backup

If you take a look at disasters like Katrina, it becomes obvious that having data backed up at your office isn’t going to help if everything is under water. Being able to communicate effectively with your clients during a disaster and still have access to all your data, is key to keeping business alive.

Recovery. One of the key elements to backing up data is testing to make sure it is available when you need it. Not only that but how easy and fast is it to get the files back in place?

The FileVault application keeps all of your critical files backed up to where you specify. You can create a backup folder within your My Documents area to put the files. Then when you need them you just login to that folder and download making it a fast and easy recovery solution.

Critical Files Versus Whole Computer. Although the FileVault application does a great job of backing up critical files if you need to back up more you should consider using Mozy. If you just need a little more space you can always purchase more for the Vault at $9.95 a month for two gigs of extra storage.

Have a question regarding the Vault or want to increase storage? Send an email to support@cpasitesolutions.com or call 800-896-4500 with your question or request.